Flicker
by smellslikechidna
Summary: [chp. 2 up] Rouge realises that helping Shadow regain his memory was perhaps the worst thing she could ever do.
1. Prologue

Hmm. I like Shadow the Hedgehog. Though that's an understatement. His voice[s] make my knees go funny. This fic is a Shadow fic. With lashings of Maria, and a smattering of Team Dark. I apologise for any crappiness in this fic, it's one of the first Sonic-genre fics I've ever done [it's much different from Pokemon, no?] so there may or may not be OOCness. But please bear with me, I'll try my very best. =D

=disclaimer= Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, Sonic Heroes, Shadow, Rouge, E123, Maria and all related characters are all property of Sonic Team and SEGA. Not me. Alas.

* * *

_=flicker=_

"Are you sure about this?" A feminine voice that held no note of her familiar flirtatiousness. A large ear twitched in worry.

"Wouldn't you take every chance you had?" Shadow did not meet Rouge's eyes, instead, let his gaze settle on the hospital-issue bed in front of him. He did not feel afraid, no, the word 'apprehensive' fitted his mood aptly at that moment. "It's a risk worth taking." he said flatly.

Rouge said nothing to that, except, "Well, don't blame me when you're drooling into a jar if it goes wrong." A false smirk, both of them knew it was, just like her comment was false, flat humour. The room was bright, reeked of antiseptic and medicines. Shadow seemed to stand out more in the white, whereas she did not feel quite so conspicuous. "Well, you know the drill. Up." She pointed one elegantly gloved hand at the bed.

"Where's Omega?" An afterthought. It was rare for the three to be two.

"Keeping guard, what else?" Outside the door, systems on high alert. Sneaking into GUN headquarters was one thing. Stealing their equipment was most certainly another, and sticking around while they used it would have her court-martialled if caught. Key word: if.

"What else indeed." Shadow pulled himself up onto the bed; it was human issue, meaning that the hedgehog had to jump to gain foothold on the metal bars. Rouge wondered momentarily how Shadow would react to an offer of a leg-up, then realised that she could do without any more scars on her face.

It was, without doubt, the oddest thing she'd ever had to do. She had not trusted herself to tell Shadow what his memory was missing, and besides, she doubted that he would react quite so well if she told him that he was the one to blow up the moon, and who tried to destroy the planet. She had seen enough of Shadow's guilt-trip the first time around. Name dropping hadn't helped in the slightest, Shadow only recognising the name 'Maria' from mythology he had read.

She had never expected Shadow to be the type of guy to have a hobby. But then again, there were a lot of things she would never have expected of Shadow.

He cleared his throat expectantly, eyes startlingly bright in the light. "Are you sure about this?" she asked once more, just to be sure, "You realise we're going off of Omega's analysis, and not instructions."

A look told her what Shadow himself would never tell her. He kicked his legs out and swung so that he sat with his legs straight out, his boots making a heavy sound. Rouge tsked as she swapped her pink-rimmed gloves for surgical latex, and reached for a small bottle and a cloth. They had tested this before, and she was prepared for the headache he would suffer with later. She covered her own sensitive nose and mouth with a thick face mask before wetting the cloth and handing it to Shadow, who held it to his nose without any hesitancy. "Deep breath," she reminded him, speaking only to fill the awkward silence.

"I know." But he sounded much more sluggish than he had a few moments ago. She threw an arm out just in time as he wavered, eyelids growing heavy. He yawned and Rouge made a mental note to tease him about the child-like-ness of it when he woke up.

_If_ he woke up.

"Lie down."

A sleepy nod. Spines marked their protest against the pillow as they punctured it, he closed her eyes on her order. They did not open again, and he breathed slowly and easily.

Rouge almost felt guilty that she would be the one to take it away from him.

* * *

E123, codename Omega, looked quite the picture as they headed out of the compound, part Flicky-powered killing machine, part mother hen as he carried the still-sleeping hedgehog. Shadow stirred slightly, bare toes curling slightly in the cold air; the mech adjusted its sizable arms to compensate. It did not speak, because Rouge had ordered him not to. GUN security was tight enough, apart from one minor error. 

"_Now!_" Rouge, standing in front of him, hissed, kicking off from the ground and catching hold of the breeze with her wings. Omega lifted one hand away from Shadow, again compensating for the hedgehog's weight, and latched onto Rouge's foot, and was lifted into the air.

GUN had never planned on an air-lifted enemy. Though she was hardly an enemy, she corrected herself. She was on the payroll, after all. And Shadow… well, for all she knew, he was a GUN project. Station Square came into view as she crossed the desert, how fortunate that the sun had set. She estimated ten minutes until they were 'home', a small apartment downtown in a building where people kept themselves to themselves and therefore did not question what a bat her age was doing living with a hedgehog [who, in turn, practically lived at the library] and a large robot. The lights of Twinkle Park slowly went out as she approached; she chanced a look at her watch and blinked when she realised just how late it was. Station Square was no place for a lady at this time of night, she thought, speeding up slightly, chancing a look towards her feet and smirking when she saw Shadow's feet waving involuntarily in the air.

Shadow stirred, and stirring slept, and sleeping, did not dream at all.

* * *

a/n - yeah, so… anyway… that was the prologue. If it sucked royally, please tell me. I know it was really short, and I'm really sorry. 


	2. One

First part! Thank you so much for reading this, I really appreciate it! Kudos and plushies to night-emerald, nunyabisnis, ShadowXRouge, Golbezandcrew, WhiteValkerye and Takara. Thank you so much! I promise you all that this fic will get better, I'm working really hard on it! 

Also, tiny note: There's a slight crossover with Sonic X in this, in the way Rouge behaves with the President. She's very arrogant in the show, and I've tried, somewhat, to put it across. Failed dismally, but tried. ;

Usual disclaimer applies, this part will probably be rewritten at a later date, when I'm not a complete Sonic newbie. D

_

* * *

_

_flicker_

* * *

_warm…_

He was warm. The blackness consumed him, but he was warm, and whatever was warm held him tight in its web.

He did not want to leave it; he pointedly ignored the light shining against his closed eyelids, and the bleeping noises he could barely hear, but he was not a patient person.

Yet.

After all, virtues must be taught

* * *

  
Shadow read. 

Shadow read because Shadow had nothing better to do. After all, it wasn't as if he could get a job, was it? Though the old lady who ran the library seemed to have taken quite a shine to the 'nice young man' who had systematically worked his way through most of the shelves she tended to.

Rouge thought it was hilarious.

Speaking of Rouge…

Shadow reached up into his quills and pulled a particularly long one out, wincing but realising that he quite liked the sensation, before using it (it was black, he preferred using black quills, he only had so many red ones to go around) to mark his page, and reached for the small reporters notepad on the coffee table in front of him.

This had been her wise idea. Shadow had never thought himself the type to keep a journal. After all, what little he did in a day would never be fascinating reading (wake up, jog, eat, sprint, feel inexplicably nervous around humans twice his size), and there was so little in his past that there was nothing to recollect. No, Rouge had said, it's a dream journal. You write about what you dream about. It'll help you!

I dream about pudding, he had replied, quite seriously, and thanked wherever he had learned his fast reflexes for saving him from the boot aimed at his nose. Rouge didn't like being told her great ideas had been even greater failures.

Shadow had thought it more often and more furiously when the pudding dreams were less often, replaced by dreams of being in a warm, dark place. The dream journal, therefore, was a very boring read, not like Aristophanes, now banished to the coffee table.

March 4th, Pudding.

March 5th, Very dark room, which smelled of vanilla. Pudding.

March 6th, Very dark room with possible voices (however, Omega barged into my room and woke me up; he may be the cause)

Ad infinitum.

Lazily, he scrawled the date, too irritated by such an inane thing to write in his usually immaculate cursive - he had no clue where he learned to write so neatly - and 'Very dark room. Bright lights in my eyes'. He tossed the notepad carelessly back to its place and reached for his book, then second-guessed himself and stood, stretching his legs slightly with a tiny growl.

Bored… so bored… and Omega was on standby mode and Rouge was shopping.

Or stealing.

Or possibly both, he wasn't exactly sure, but he knew for a fact that Rouge did not earn enough as a government lackey to pay for the amount of jewellery she had.

He did not watch TV solely because Rouge did not have a TV, the high frequencies playing havoc with her ears. The same was held for radios, though when Omega was not off-line, he was able to tune into the police scanner. He decided to go to Omega's room (Omega's _closet_, more like, Rouge's apartment being rather on the small side now that there were three there instead of one) to see how long it would take before the robot was back on line.

He also decided to do it hopping, to improve his balance and speed control, both of which had been rather poor lately. Damned bat and her 'ideas'.

The door opened before he reached the handle, he did not get a chance to drop his other leg before everything rushed at once past him.

* * *

Rouge was not shopping, though she had already been, just for posterity (and for necessity – Omega needed oil, and she had promised herself that she would buy Shadow a bookmark, if only to stop the quill-pulling that made her squirm when she heard the spine come loose from his skin). Instead, she lounged in a thickly padded chair in the President's airy, bright office and relished two things: air-conditioning, and window blinds. She half-watched condensation trickle down a glass of water, and tapped a foot impatiently. Really, just because he was the President didn't mean that he could keep a lady waiting. She sighed audibly and flopped backwards, mindful of her perfectly folded wings, staring at the chandelier. Perfect crystal, she noted absently, but poorly manufactured. 

She had questions to ask her employer, anyway. An ear twitched irritably as she reached that thought. It had been two weeks, more, even, and Shadow did not dream. Shadow _should_ have dreamt. That was the whole point of their 'mission' in the first place. Shadow would undergo the procedure, and then his dreams would be regressive memories, from before the ARK disaster, when he awoke for the first time, to when he fell from the colony, and everything in between.

And then they could get him into some serious therapy. Shadow had tried to destroy the planet out of guilt over _Maria_'s death, after all. What would he do for blowing up the moon?

Rouge did not fail. She had never failed yet, and she would be damned if she was going to fail now. A small fang worried her lip momentarily. She would be damned if she would fail _Shadow _now, the Stoic hedgehog had started to grow on her.

The door opened, but she had heard footsteps coming towards it for a while now. Rouge did not rise to greet the tall, tired-looking man who walked in, as was normally expected – she knew far too much to be expected to, instead, she winked as he sat down and shot him a toothy smile. Arrogance with arrogance, of course.

The President, waving his aide out of the room, gave a heavy sort of sigh, and for a moment, Rouge felt sorry for him. After all, running a country that had had as much chaos as this one had in the past few years must be tiring.

And then, she realised that half of it would never have happened if it weren't for his input.

"Miss Rouge," he said, somewhat heavily, and Rouge did not bother to correct him on the prefix, "I assume you're not here to ask for your next assignment?"

* * *

Shadow paused, awestruck, as he stared around the hangar. Huge metallic creatures stared down at him with dead eyes; humans held blue light in their hands as they fussed over the metal beasts that loomed over Shadow like giants_. He took a tentative step forwards, trying to mask the dead metal clunk of his inactive boots on the thick steel floor. Professor Gerald would be so angry if he found him here, he felt, he knew._

And yet, in the presence of such beings, that stared down as though they passed judgement over ARK, over the humans and him, Shadow felt as though he could not leave this room. He inched closer to one, where the humans had finished using their blue light, and therefore, would not see him, and he stared up. A green Chaos Drive shone from its hold, Shadow could not turn away from the light.

A Chaos Drive… didn't Professor Gerald lay claim to their invention?

Had the Professor created these, as well as Shadow himself?

A footstep, a giggle. Shadow felt the spines on his back raise to attention and his ears prick at the sounds. "You must be the person my grandfather was talking about!"

A girl.

Shadow turned towards the voice, high-pitched and breathy, as though whoever owned it had just ran a great distance. Paleness suddenly turned to bright white; Shadow hissed and covered his eyes-

"Hedgehog Shadow is responding." A pair of bright red LED-lit 'eyes' did not waver as Shadow blinked, and stared around him. Omega's room, without a doubt; the room was starker and plainer than Shadow's, with a plug socket overloaded with various adapters and extension cables, and a box in the corner of the room filled with various ammunitions that Omega needed to restock every so often.

Shadow cursed slightly, the breathy voice still ringing in his ears, and lowered his arm. "Omega," he acknowledged, forcing back whatever he was feeling and dragging up his patented semi-bored face. "You're online."

"Obviously." came the deadpan reply, and Shadow tried not to smirk through his annoyance. "You were in my room." Not a question, a statement, but it was rare that Omega ever needed to ask a question. Perhaps it was the only thing that Eggman was good for, making sure that his creations had the same mental capability as their creator, if not more so. Briefly, Shadow realised that he would have been interested to see how capable the rest of Omega's series was.

"To see if you were online yet. Rouge is shopping," he added, as an afterthought, before Omega asked, and then frowned. Even Rouge didn't usually spend so long shopping, it wasn't as though Station Square was huge and he knew that Rouge hated being out in daylight if she could help it.

"All systems are functioning above 80" Shadow nodded, somewhat absently, at Omega's proud announcement. The robot had a vain streak, probably picked up from its creator. Or from Rouge.

Speaking of Rouge, he wanted to speak to her. Now. He could feel the anxiousness creeping up his spine and tingling, irritatingly. But she'd hidden the Chaos Emerald from him for some reason, and he didn't feel up to the drain on his system that a Chaos Control would cause anyway.

Still, the bat had some explaining to do. Who the hell was 'Professor Gerald'? And why the hell didn't he _dream_ that little jaunt through the hangar? Wasn't that the whole point of Rouge's little experiment? Idiot, _idiot_ bat...

"Omega. Give me a pen."

One came out of one of Omega's many utility slots.

* * *

"You realise I could have you court-martialled for this, don't you?" 

"You realise I know too much."

The President gave an exasperated sigh; Rouge flashed a wicked grin. Sometimes, getting one over the most powerful man in the country was a great way to de-stress. "And besides," she added, "I could also get you impeached, remember?" She slid one jade eye over to a closed blind, behind which, the moon had risen in the daylight, white in the sky core burning brightly still. She leaned forward in her chair, wings flexing as she moved, "So, let's make a deal. I'll keep babysitting Project Shadow for you, and you give me my information."

"You're asking the impossible, Miss Rouge," was the reply, along with a sly chuckle. Rouge frowned, one fang worrying the inside of her lip. "All files on Project Shadow were deleted after the Gizoid and the Biolizard both failed. The Secret Service made sure of it." He did not mention the one password protected file that had been left, purely because it wasn't necessary to. A pause, as the President took a sip of water from the glass on his desk. Rouge watched his Adam's Apple bob slightly and realised that she was hungry, then shook it off. "However, seeing as you've not only the audacity to sit in my office and tell me you've used classified GUN hardware, _and_ that you're harbouring a known war criminal, perhaps we can offer each other assistance?"

Rouge bit her lip then, though he didn't notice it. She hated arrogant men. She hated it even more when they managed to outwit her.

She wished she had been old enough to vote, too.

* * *

Omega was cooking when she came back, an apple in her mouth as she fumbled with her keys before giving up and tossing them onto the small table next to the door. Something entirely fish-based was being made; she pulled a face at the smell that would linger for days. 

"You're late." Bored, as usual, Shadow stood by the front door as though he had been waiting for her. Irritation at the remark built in the joints of her wings and spread outwards, and she dumped the rest of her bags on the floor. Shadow smirked slightly. "Bad day at the office?" He picked up one of the bags – a pink one, and turned on his heel towards the living room. "Omega's making tuna, but you're having tempura."

She watched the shorter hedgehog disappear around a corner, and then damned them both.

* * *

A/N Yay! First real part done! All CC appreciated - I really need advice on writing Sonic fiction, so any you have would be great! 


	3. Two

Wow. Mad, mad, _mad_ props to WhiteValkerye, Golbez, SpadeHand, JulesAleena, Amissa, Noyze-the-Jackal and Tyler Asroc. Total 1337 pwnage. Thank you so much. I'll try not to let you down. _Everything_ will, eventually, be answered.

Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes and all characters contained therein are property of Sonic Team.

-

flicker

-

Most of the people who should have been there were already dead. Or, at least, looking it in the eye.

Perhaps that was what hurt Gerald the most, dressed all in black as he helped Josef carry the weight of his daughter down the church aisle. Those present had not known Maria the way he had, or the way those on ARK had. They hadn't been the ones watching her rot, day in, day out, or the ones racing behind GUN's back for a cure.

And yet, the fact that so many people had given a damn enough to turn up… no. It didn't help.

Heavily, Gerald laid a hand on his son's shoulder as they took their seats in the small church, away from the noise of Station Square. Vadim took his brother's other side, but concentrated more on keeping his own son quiet. Morbidly, Gerald realised that this was the first time in almost a year that the Robotnik boys had all been together.

Gerald still wasn't clear on what had happened, stuck on Earth as he had been. He had not heard about it until the day after, until the smoke had cleared, and the labs cleaned out. One lab assistant who had been deemed too irrelevant for questioning had called once the shuttle had landed.

A covert strike. It made Gerald burn in anger. They had stormed the landing bay and had not stopped after that. Projects were burned, prototypes destroyed, and sectors completely blocked off with debris. How could a fourteen-year-old girl have hoped to stand against that? And still...

_Bring hope to humanity._

It was inspired.

It would be the finishing touch to what GUN wanted so badly, it murdered his granddaughter.

-

Rouge had barely finished eating before Omega, dressed in the "Kiss the Chef!" apron she had bought him as a joke, yanked her plate away, and Shadow, dressed in nothing aside from socks, had pounced impatiently with questions.

"I saw something and I didn't dream it. Why?"

"What, no 'how was your day'? _Mou_, Shadow, I'm disappointed in you." The glare Shadow leveled at his teammate indicated that he did not appreciate her teasing. "Alright, what did you see?"

"Old GUN mechs. Being built." Shadow had the grace to pull her chair out as she made to stand, too focused on his interrogation to realise that Rouge had never, not since he had woken up, asked him to, not had she taught him his manners.

Rouge canted a look back as she flopped back onto the soft, comfortable couch, making sure her training made it completely unreadable. "Old?" she asked, stretching her arms out and tugging her gloves off one finger at a time, "How old?"

"The first Chaos Drive series. At least."

Success! Those models were at least fifty-five years old, so that would fit perfectly. The only thing was- "Wait, you _didn't_ dream it?"

"No. Just like I told you." Shadow had not sat down, instead, stood in front of Rouge with his arms folded and that permanent frown on his face. Rouge raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "I was outside Omega's room," he finished, answering her unspoken question.

Rouge paused in her stretching, and looked at him carefully. If seeing Omega meant that Shadow had had flashbacks of GUN mechs, then… "Did you see anything else? Was it just you there? I'm assuming that this was in a hangar of some sort, right?"

It was only through virtue of living with Shadow for almost three months that Rouge's highly trained senses were able to catch his reactions. "No, there was no-one else there," he said, and her ears picked up a tightness in his voice that was not normally present, that he was failing to suppress, and her eyes picked up a tiny movement as though Shadow had gone to fidget, and forced the reaction down. A spy could easily tell when someone else was lying. "Why didn't I dream it, Rouge?"

"Didn't I tell you that Omega might have been wrong?" she snapped, "Now sit down, you're making me nervous."

Shadow looked, for a moment, as though he was debating whether or not rolling his eyes would damage his perma-serious image. Rouge had never seen him laugh, after all – not really, nothing more than the sardonic snicker, but still, he did as he was told, sitting stiffly on the edge of his chair. "Why didn't I dream it, Rouge?" he asked again.

"I don't know. Just be glad you saw _something_ for now, will you?" Shadow still didn't look satisfied. "I'll look into it." And only because he was Shadow, but she could feel a theory coming on.

He glared, but he picked up his book, shifted back into the seat, and did not question her after that.

-

Sir, REM counts are rising. The procedure was successful.

_Shadow…?_

_Can you hear me yet, little one?_ _The world cannot wait to meet you. _

-

The notebook was cast aside, left on top of a wayward book. Rouge gave an insomniac, frustrated growl, and tossed the paper photo of Biolizard aside. "You don't remember _that_?" she asked, incredulously.

Shadow looked at her, bored. "I just told you," he answered, in that irritatingly calm manner. "I fought it with that hedgehog and the Echidna." Close, but not quite. Rouge had watched Shadow overcome gravity itself to defeat his prototype.

"Nothing before that?"

"Should I?"

Rouge moaned, distressed, and smoothed out the papers from where she'd crushed them after one of Shadow's many blank looks. So far, she had shown him the papers for Project Shadow (which depressed him), the diagrams and blueprints for the Mark I Chaos Drive series (which intrigued him), a picture of ARK (which he blinked at) and finally, a picture – one of the only surviving pictures – of Biolizard.

Her theory, therefore, was in tatters. So much for triggers.

Huffing, Shadow got to his feet, grabbing his Air Shoes from the side of the chair, and started to tug them onto his feet, irritated. "Where are you going?" Rouge asked, though she already knew the answer.

"To the library." Bingo. "It might be more productive than wasting a Saturday looking at pictures."

Wasting…? The nerve of him! She had gone two nights without sleep, and Shadow still didn't realise just how much she was putting on the line here. "Now wait just a damn second," she raised her voice as he was piling up his books (she noted, smirking later when he had gone, that the pile he held came up to his nose), "you're the one who wants your memory back so badly."

She put her hands on her hips the way she always did when she meant business. "It's not _my_ fault that Sonic trashed that robot so badly Omega couldn't get to the hard drive. It's not my fault _or_ my problem that you're in your fifties and have the attitude of a teenager, and it's _not_ my problem that you can't even remember who you are." She halted, gauging her words' effect. Shadow was glaring back defiantly over his books; Rouge had hit every sore spot he had.

"If you'd stop being such an ass, I'm trying to help you." The sheaf of papers was sticking to her ungloved hand, she tried not to glare at Shadow too much, it was simply another thing he did not know.

Shadow glowered a second longer, and then averted his eyes. Round one to Rouge. "Sit," she ordered, and he sat, placing the books on the floor. She held the papers up and ruffled through them, flicking through the sheets until she came across a particularly battered photocopy of a black and white photograph cut from a newspaper fifty years ago. This was her trump card, the thing which, above all else, she was sure would boot Shadow's memories into gear.

Shadow himself did not look too impressed. "Well?" he asked, folding his arms and looking pointedly at the back of the picture Rouge held just out of his reach, her expression hidden behind it. She hesitated slightly – how would Shadow react if she was right?

He swiped it.

A severe-looking Gerald Robotnik stared back at him, two years before ARK, his moustache long and not entirely grey (though in the photograph, one couldn't really tell), looking ever the eminent scientist.

Shadow took a sharp intake of breath. It was not Professor Gerald he was looking at.

Small, and not yet wasting away from the brain disease that would try to kill her, Maria Robotnik smiled out of the photo, in which she sat in her grandfather's lap, smiling. It was one of the few remaining photographs of her.

Shadow stared, and Rouge was shocked when his eyes took on a different light than the hard, Stoic gaze she was used to. They looked strange under the light. "Shadow?" she ventured. This was enough, she was no sadist, after all. "Shadow!"

"Maria…?"

"_What_?"

A jolt from the hedgehog, and it was over. "What?"

"You just-" And Rouge didn't get the chance to finish, because Shadow had bent, hauling his pile of books up, standing up too quickly and using them to steady himself.

"I have to get these back today. I promised." he said, a little too importantly. Rouge nodded, but didn't reply to that.

-

"_Shadow?" _

Who are you?

"Don't you remember me?"

Should I?

"That all depends on you."

Heh. How predictable.

--

a/n I apologize for the lateness – I replayed Sonic Heroes, and Battle (the journals are a fanficcer's dream!), and was AFK for a good while. I hope this makes up for it. I'm very, very sorry if it doesn't. ' The plot's gone slightly more… active than I would have liked. It's very fun to write!


End file.
